Set your sights high to learn world languages! Find both visual and audio lessons. Choose a language from Chinese, Dutch, Japanese, Polish, Russian, or Spanish. A list of tutorials appears including the tutorial's author and short description of lessons. Learn colors, counting, days of the week, common phrases, or more challenging language skills. Practice speaking using the microphone tab and say words on your own. Click on the links in the tabs of the tutorials to try the interactives: matching games, flashcards, and tic tac toe.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

This is a wonderful site to use with students to get a taste of other languages, including during study of world geography or cultures. Assign different tutorials that complement classroom activities. Share this site on your class website or blog as a resource for practice at home. Use this site on your interactive whiteboard to introduce and review world language terms. Obviously this site has many uses in the world language classroom. But this tool could also be used as enrichment for students or even an after-school club! Your verbal-linguistic gifted students would also enjoy learning and comparing basics in several languages. If you have ESL/ELL students who speak one of these languages, invite others to learn basics to converse with and respect their peers.

Fasten your seatbelt and get ready to take a trip to Asia or Europe! The site, Fasten Seat Belts shares videos explaining cultural norms in both Asia and Europe. There are numerous videos and topics to choose from. Simply choose a continent from the map. Choose from the videos available explaining tips such as proper gift giving in China, where to stand on an escalator in the UK, or what color of ink is acceptable for use in Portugal. Each video is fairly short and includes a short explanation with a "Did You Know" fact in addition to the video. Use the search on the site to choose videos by country, theme, or type.

In the Classroom

World language teachers may want to use these videos throughout the year to discuss cultural norms. Use the videos to introduce the concept of "culture" in a world cultures or social studies class. View videos before taking students on field trips-- real or virtual -- to Asia or Europe. Introduce the site to students, then challenge them to find other tips to share and create their own videos to share using a tool such as SchoolTube reviewed here.

Travel back in time via this video site. Slide the bar to any year from 1860 to the present. Choose a year and view a random video from that time. (Yes, we know there isn't video from 1860, but this features a YouTube video of the first sound ever recorded in 1860.) The information bar to the right of the video screen tells how many videos are available for that year and includes filters to include or exclude topics such as commercials, sports, movies, and music. Click the icon to move to a different video from the same year. Use the search bar at the top of each page to search for any topic to find videos available on the site. The one down side to the site is that videos are displayed randomly when choosing a year. It would be nice to have a complete list of all video titles available. Although the site uses Flash, there is a downloadable app available for viewing on mobile devices. The videos are hosted on YouTube. If your school blocks YouTube, they may not be viewable. You could always view the videos at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid reviewed here to download the videos from YouTube.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

History teachers will love using this site to give a perspective of time periods taught in class. Apply filters to limit the videos included. For example, turn off everything except current events if you are looking for news from a specific year. Share this site with students and have them explore videos available for a given time period. Use media to build a broader sense of what the time period was like. Ask student groups to watch enough that they can hypothesize a general description of what was important to people at the time, based on advertisements, news, and more. Have them keep a list of the things they observe and questions they would like to ask if they could talk to someone from that time period. Challenge students to create a newspaper article from their "era" using the Newspaper Clipping Generator. Share this site with students and challenge them to use a site such as TimeRime reviewed here to create an interactive timeline of historic events or people.

Looking for resources to use on your interactive whiteboard? If so, this site is a tremendous resource for all whiteboard users, not just those with a Promethean Board. View, search, and download from over 60,000 resources in all subject areas and grade levels. Use the Resources tab to search by state standard, content, grade level, or resource type. Register on the site to enable download ability as well as many other features such as saving favorites, reviewing resources, asking questions on the technical forum, following specific users, and uploading your own resources. Each resource includes a short description, grade level recommendation, file format, and size. Another great feature is the slide show included with each download for previewing different pages used on each chart.

In the Classroom

Before you try any of these activities, think about how you can make the lesson more student-centered. Find ideas in TeachersFirst's Hands off, Vanna! Giving Students Control of Interactive Whiteboard Learning . Browse the site for interactive whiteboard resources to download for classroom use. Bookmark and save favorites for later use. Download any resource, then tweak it to your individual needs. Have questions about creating Promethean Flipcharts? Post your question on the technical board to receive helpful replies. If you have a SmartBoard, be sure to check out the SmartBoard lessons and resources page located here. You will need to download the ActivInspire software (free).

Comments

This is the go-to site for Promethean flipchart downloads. Most files were created by teachers. The only downside is that the files are hit-or-miss. There are many gems, but you might have to browse some not-so-great files to find them.Tim, , Grades: 0 - 6

Backpack.tv contains videos produced by teachers of lectures about particular topic areas. Search by topic, subject, duration, or presenter for videos ranging from 5 to 20 minutes in length. General subject areas (at the times of this review) include Algebra, Calculus, Chemistry, Basic Math, Economics, Physics, Biology, and Art History. Currently videos include only a title without a description of the content, so you may need to take some time to find videos that meet your needs. Create an account to save videos in your queue for easy access.

In the Classroom

Use videos on your interactive whiteboard to introduce or review content. Share videos on your classroom website or blog for student use at home. Share videos with students using the Facebook, Twitter, or email button. Encourage students to share links to specific videos they find helpful on a "Video Reviews" (yes, that is a pun) page of your class wiki. For a very real challenge, have students create their own simple review videos and upload to SchoolTube reviewed here or YouTube, whichever works best in your school. Embed them on your class wiki for a year-to-year, student-made study guide!

Find lesson ideas and more for literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, history and social studies at the reworked site that was once part of MarcoPolo. Book articles, data bases, educational gaming, professional development events, sound, film, video resources, and resource website lists all aid teachers and learners. A calendar keeps you up to date with famous dates in history.

In the Classroom

Use Edsitement for lesson ideas in language, history, literature, and cultures. Find multiple sources to give a deeper comprehension on the subject matter. In history classes, keep the ongoing calendar in your favorites to celebrate an important historical day every day. Lesson plans cover multiple grade levels in many different subject areas. Resources can enrich, or even to give further explanation to current topics of study.

Film Story is a great listing of history films searchable by country, era, subject, and film type (feature film, documentary, or mini-series). Another helpful feature is when you roll your cursor over the map, the region and how many films are available will pop up. Film Story's goal is to help you learn more about historical people, places, and events through film. Once you click on a film, you see the era, type of film, etc. and several themes. All of these are links to other films in these categories. Film story is simply a directory. Search out the films you find on your favorite search engine and borrow them from a library or video store. No registration required to use this site.

In the Classroom

Discover videos on Film Story to help build prior knowledge and illustrate what students are learning in history or world languages/cultures classes. Find several films and have small groups of students view them. Have students become "eyewitnesses" to history and watch the video assigned to them before they have a context for it. Then have them write or blog about what they think they are witnessing. Afterward they can research the event in more depth and write a follow-up reflection on what was actually happening in the video. Challenge your students to use a site such as Timetoast reviewed here, to create timelines of topics researched on the site. Use images from public domain sites, such as the collections reviewed here, to illustrate the events.

Enjoy perusing this list of Asian American children's books, divided by country. Select the area of your interest: Cambodian, Hawaiian, Japanese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and several others. The lists include a wide range of selections, from picture books to young adult books and from folk tales to non-fiction titles. There is also a list of recommended authors and illustrators. If you are interested in similar book lists, TeachersFirst's CurriConnects found here offers several other curriculum-related, leveled booklists.

In the Classroom

Refer your class to this list for multicultural reading and reports. If you have any ESL/ELL students from these areas, they may enjoy reading literature from (or about) their homeland. Challenge students to read one of the books on this list and research the location. Have cooperative learning groups create a mash-up map using one of the many TeachersFirst Edge Tools reviewed here.

Critical Past offers a collection of more than 57,000 historical videos and more than 7 million historical photos. All of the photos and videos are royalty free, archival stock footage. The site is in the business of selling these images and clips. "Royalty free" means that purchasing an image/clip will not require additional fees to the photographer, but it does NOT mean that the images/clips are "free" to download and use at will. Most of the footage comes from U.S. Government Agency sources. All of the videos and photos can be viewed for free online and shared with others via url, Twitter, or Facebook. Search the site either by decade, topic, or keyword. Along the right side bar of Critical Past, you will find "related videos" that correlate to the current search.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use photos or videos on Critical Past to help illustrate what students are learning in history. Ask students to be "eyewitnesses" of history and watch a video before they have context for it. Students can write or blog about what they think they are witnessing. Afterward they can research the event in more depth and write a follow-up reflection on what was actually happening in the clip. Challenge your students to use a site such as Timetoast reviewed here to create timelines of topics researched on the site. Use images from public domain sites, such as the collections reviewed here, to illustrate the events.

Ready to think big? How about an interactive timeline that covers all of time from the Big Bang to today? Chronozoom is an ambitious project, just launched (at the time of this review), that seeks to create zoomable, interactive timelines for the entire history of time. At present, the site is still under construction, but it is visually stunning and a little overwhelming. You will need to set aside some time to watch the video tour and to tinker with the site before presenting it to students. Every move of the mouse, every click, seems to create "explosions" of graphs and timelines; you'll need to be patient and get the hang of navigation.

The site's creators freely admit that they don't really know where the project will lead, and what technologies might emerge that will help them create more content for the site. There are some caveats for using the site. First, the site assumes a particular theory of the creation of the universe, and the timeline of its existence. Second, the site can lend itself to aimless "mousing," or the temptation to simply click and move the mouse to see how the site will react, with no attention to the content at all.

In the Classroom

This is a big idea, still in its early stages. Obviously it has usefulness as a way of visually demonstrating the sheer immensity of time, and the relative insignificance of human existence in comparison. You could use this site as an intro to any history or geology class simply to generate BIG questions that students want to know. Consider asking gifted students, or students interested in technology applications to imagine what the site COULD be. How would they create a visual overview of--forever? How can one prioritize what matters? But on an interactive whiteboard--WOW! If you, as current students seem to be, are comfortable with imagining the world as a series of hyperlinks rather than a linear march, this site has limitless potential.

What Happened When? This useful site allows you to aggregate a text timeline by date, theme or geographic area using links to Google searches, Google images and content from HistoryWorld (with which the site is affiliated). Enter a date or keyword(s) for the event(s). You will see a text list with icons that lead to related Google, images, and HistoryWorld info. Try exploring by themes such as performing arts and science and entering a year to see what occurred during the same year. While the overall visual impact is fairly bland, it's a great "quick and easy" utility for putting events into a chronological context. If you search two very diverse events, you can discover unusual convergences. Additionally, it can be the jumping off point for a more complex search by helping students make connections among ideas, characters and events that may seem unrelated. For example, this is a wonderful tool to explore decades of the twentieth century or periods in the arts.

In the Classroom

Make this one of your bookmarks on classroom computers used for research, and suggest that students add it to their own research repertoire. Consider a classroom activity that begins with a common starting place (a date, an event, a character), and has groups of students follow their own self-guided path through the links. Where does each group end up? Why are the paths different? After having student explore on their own, have them "teach" how they found the information most important to them. A projector or interactive whiteboard is ideal for such a demo.

Use Animaps to go beyond Google's My Maps, adding animation. You can add text, multiple location stops, and images to maps. Maps that you make can be shared with anyone or kept private. Connect your Animaps to Facebook and Twitter for direct photo and map sharing. This tool's major advantage is that it adds the factor of time to the map.

In the Classroom

To use this tool, create an account and start playing with the features. There are also tutorials and showcases featured on the site to show what can be done. This would be great for creating time lines in social studies class, showing different places and teaching geography and social studies together. Foreign language students could create maps explaining culture aspects of the language or trace the origins of language. Assign students in math or family consumer sciences to be travel agents and plan vacations, including the costs of the trip.

As part of a book project, have your students show the setting of a novel they are reading, with images that annotate their impression of what the setting looks like. Have students create visual current events, especially for events that take place over time, such as the primaries and Presidential Elections.

See a new way to look at the USA (or the World, or Japan). This site resizes countries on the map in relation to various issues: population, resources, employment, religion, death, business, the environment, and more. Each main topic also has numerous sub-topics to explore. Maps adjust to correspond to data. For example, click on "unemployed" on the U.S. map and you see the states in proportion to the number of unemployed workers. Mouse over the state and you can see the percentage of unemployed workers. A list on the right ranks states from 1 to 50 for the percentage of unemployed (or other specified topic). New maps/topics are constantly being added, and you can make suggestions as to what types of maps you would like to see.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

When studying a specific topic in class (unemployment, AIDS, drunk driving, religion, energy resources, crops, etc.), share this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Ask students why certain state or countries might differ from others. Are there issues that appear to be related, such as alcoholism and unemployment? Is it cause/effect or simply a coincidence? During election years, explore political leanings/polls and other statistics from this site. Have cooperative learning groups explore a specific topic (or state) and possible reasons for the data. To show what they have learned from this site, challenge groups to create an online graphic to share using Tabblo reviewed here. Have students make a multimedia presentation using one of the many TeachersFirst Edge tools reviewed here. Remember that you can always take screenshots of a map using PrtScrn key in Windows (then paste it where you want it) or using Command+Shift+4 on a Mac to save the image on your computer. Use the screenshots in explanations and presentations.

FORA.tv's claim to fame is as the Web's largest collection of conference and event videos. These videos come from sources such as universities, think tanks, and other intelligent discourses. While one can sign up for this service, it is not required. Joining for free does have some perks such as the ability to rate or comment on videos. At the time of this review, there were over 10,000 FREE videos. An additional 500 videos were available for a FEE.

Videos can be shared through email, embedded, or linked with the URL by copying and pasting it to your own blog or website. Video content is categorized into business, environment, politics, science, technology, and culture. Each category has numerous sub-categories available. Please preview anything before you share it with your students. At the time of this review there was a subcategory "Sex" which may not be appropriate for most classrooms. But always preview! Teachers may want to share ONLY specific video links.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Search to find videos relevant to the subjects that you are teaching. Videos are thought provoking and suggest different viewpoints. Once you select a video, show it as an inepth look into a topic you are already studying. Share the video and start a class discussion about the viewpoints of the video and the students' own viewpoints. From here, students could write a position paper from their own side or do further research for a class debate. Challenge your students to create their own video about topics being discussed/learned in class. Share the videos using a tool such as SchoolTube reviewed here.

Take a virtual field trip to explore world class museums and online art institute for free! Avoid budget restrictions and field trip limitations by joining this Webby award winning site. Investigate the world of art history accompanied by two professors at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Smarthistory started as a a blog featuring free audio guides, podcasts, and videos. Later it became an interactive exploration of eras, styles, and artists. Smarthistory has recently merged with KahnAcademy utilizing the same concept: that high quality education should be free and available to all. Included in each video are informational resources to give extra information. Many universities use Smarthistory as a required part of their curriculum.

In the Classroom

A must for any art classroom, Smarthistory adds an extra dimension and deeper understanding to any history, social studies, or cultural studies classroom. Use in writing workshops to provide insights to art and culture and to into thoughts and feelings. Study written works alongside the art of past time periods. Tempt students into the amazing world of art history by watching the new videos. Bring unlimited, world-class resources to each class. All of the videos are easily adaptable to an interactive whiteboard or projector. Debate clubs can study techniques and develop their own styles of debate. Gifted classes will devour this website. Provide this link on your class website to offer students extra challenge and exploration.

Save hundreds of dollars spicing up your curriculum with virtual field trips! This site has "field trips" to take, instructions for creating, and resources for other virtual field trip sites. Field trips for; Career, fine arts, foreign language, health and PE, language arts, math, library, media, professional development, science, social studies, and technology are given. There is a plethora of topics - perfect for research and "virtual" travel. The topics are too broad to list all of them, but some include tessellations, dinosaurs, water cycle, medieval times, Civil War, oil painting, and much more! Receive a detailed tutorial for finding instructions on asking permission for field trips, creating virtual field trips, and evaluating the experience. No bus required! At the time of this review, three of the links under "Visit Related Sites" were not working.

In the Classroom

Immerse your students into your studies with a close up in depth look through virtual field trips. Visit places where time, money, and mileage inhibit your dreams for bringing your students into wondrous worlds. Find ways to visit where your class has never gone before. Create a personalized field trip to meet your every need with the detailed tutorials given. Find ways to motivate your most reluctant learners. ESL/ELL learners will appreciate the visit. Reach all types of learners through a class visit. Use field trips as a whole class anticipatory guide, a center activity, a home connection, or even as extra credit. Challenge your gifted students to be guides to their own learning. Make your class go global!

Not Just Sushi is a webquest about the Japanese culture, current and historical, centered around food as an entry point. There are three quests for you to choose from and for your students to complete: Creating a Japanese Travel Guide, Creating a Japanese Cookbook, and Creating a Japanese Restaurant. Students will learn historical, geographical, cultural, nutritional and other information about major Japanese food, through this site and links provided on this site. For students to use the notepad, a tool to take notes on what they find as they explore virtual Tokyo, you need to register them. If you do not want your students to use the notepad, you do not have to register; just have your students log in as guests. Once you have chosen (and clicked on) a restaurant or residence to explore, you will hear a conversation in Japanese with balloons in English. Be sure to click around on the image to learn information and to find the resource links. Though the website states this is for sixth grade, it is suitable for a range of grades.

In the Classroom

Create small groups of students, then use your interactive whiteboard or projector introduce the site. There are descriptions and plans under the "Teacher's Guide" for each of the three projects. You may want to post the link to the directions on either your website, or use PearlTrees reviewed here not only for the project directions, but to direct your students to only one or two of the sites listed.

Students making the "Travel Guide" can use an online program like SimpleBooklets reviewed here to present their final project to the class, or My Brochure Maker reviewed here if you want the brochures for your bulletin board. Students creating the "Cookbook" can use a site such as Bookemon reviewed here. Students interested in completing the "Japanese Restaurant" project can simply create a menu by using a site like Web Poster Wizard 7332reviewed here.

Learn a new language through music and lyrics! Choose English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portugese, Japanese, Russian, Greek, Dutch, Danish, or Romanian. Register for FREE and learn the new language. Each language has different activities: karaoke, interactive cloze activities, videos, and more. You can choose among three different difficulty levels. Some activities even have the option to "double click" to read a definition of a word. You also have the ability to submit your own songs and language activities to the site. Note that this site is fairly new and only ha a few hundred songs at the time of this review. Help contribute to the offerings!This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

This is a wonderful find for ESL/ELL and world language teachers. Teachers may prefer to do a class registration and use the offerings of the site with the entire class. Challenge your students to create (and submit) their own songs/activities in a new language. If school policy does not allow students to share songs on a site, have students create their own in-class presentations of songs and similar exercises using one selection from this site as a model.

Sqworl is a site for combining multiple links into one single link. Registration is required; however, it is very easy. You create a username and password, add your email and it is done. After registering, a personal homepage is created, this is where the magic can begin! The homepage is where groups will be created to combine url's. Then adding some groups of link begins the process of creating groups. At this point a title is given to the group being created (examples might be Math sites, American History, etc.). The final step is to add a short description. After choosing start, simply copy and paste the url you want to use and add a short description and click finish. Once a group is created, it can be shared through the url shown on the page. Sqworl also has a bookmarklet that can be added to the browser toolbar making it easier to add items to your groups without having to open the homepage. There is also a mobile app for iPhone.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

In the classroom use this site to combine url's of online class projects into one group. Create a group of resources for students or parents for different subjects and share the url through your classroom website or newsletter. Create a group with videos relating to classroom content. Create a classroom account and let students add resources they have found to groups to share with others. Show students how to follow other groups on Sqworl and share resources by creating their own groups. Share this site with others in your building or district as an easy way to save and share online resources.

This site features a wonderfully specific pictorial database of "every day" images that define cultures. Images are Creative Commons licensed and can be used by download (three sizes) or direct link. At the time of this review, general topics included German, ESL (American,) French, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, and a few others. Besides offering a photograph (in three sizes) of something specifically Chinese or something only found in Japan, the vocabulary label for the object shown as well as its translation into its language of origin is available and indexed. There is also a detailed guide for teachers offering many wonderful suggestions of how to use CAPL in the classroom. The suggested activities include using images as objects, visual "texts," media illustrations, and narratives as well as ideas for using the images to teach vocabulary and culture. More is added to this site frequently, so be sure to check back!

In the Classroom

Language students can use these images to create online posters using a tool such as Poster Wizard (reviewed here or PicLits (reviewed here. Have students make a visual lexicon of new vocabulary words. Use interest in some of the pics here as a jumping off point for more cultural exploration. Talk about what items we would photograph in the U.S. that are culturally specific and rich in cultural meaning (for example, the Green Bay Packers stadium).